Wikimedia Enterprise/Access

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The primary use case of the suite of Enterprise APIs is paid access for large commercial organisations, with associated Service Level Agreements and dedicated customer support. Nevertheless, and in accordance with the project's project's principle of access for all, there are also various ways to access the Wikimedia Enterprise APIs for free.

Freely access Wikimedia Enterprise APIs by:

• Creating a free account on the official website and using the Enterprise API access for free accounts. Discover what free accounts have access to on the Enterprise Pricing page.
• Using Wikimedia Cloud Services. You get the same access as a paid account when making a call to any Enterprise API endpoint from within PAWS, Wikimedia Cloud VPS, or Toolforge . From within those services, make your calls to any endpoint described in the Enterprise API documentation without passing an authorization header.
• Downloading Structured Contents (beta) datasets hosted on third-party platforms.

For the vast majority of use cases, these three options are more than sufficient.

Exceptional access

If you have a Wikimedia mission-aligned use case and your requirements exceed what is offered at no cost, you may request free exceptional access to the higher rate of the Enterprise APIs.

If you would like to request this, please contact <techpartnershipswikimedia.org> with a response to the six criteria described below.

Requests will be reviewed by Wikimedia Foundation staff in accordance with the following criteria, and granted at the Wikimedia Foundation's discretion. If the request includes substantive access to Wikidata content, the request will be reviewed in coordination with staff from Wikimedia Deutschland.

Exceptional access criteria

1. Who (individual or organisation) is requesting exceptional access? Please list the contact person’s name, organisation (if applicable), email address, and Enterprise API account username. 2. What is the request for? Please specify what specific exception is being requested, and for what purpose. Please link to any documentation, existing service or project, research proposal, etc. that shows the use-case. Notes All users of Wikimedia Enterprise services must abide by the copyright licenses on Wikimedia content. They are inherent and cannot be waived. Please also note the API Usage guidelines (in particular regarding sub-licensing) and any Wikimedia Foundation policies which may apply to the proposed use-case – including the Terms of Use, the User-Agent Policy. 3. Need. Can the intended use-case be fulfilled via any of the existing free access methods? Please specify how the existing public services (e.g. public database dumps, APIs, or bots, etc.) are insufficient for your needs. Notes Exceptional free access to a paid account can only be granted when all standard options are exhausted – including the free account of the Enterprise services. Possible examples include: Persistent need for access above the Enterprise API requests/second, or datasets/month, free thresholds Creation of a new feature/dataset Formal customer-service or Service Level Agreement (SLA) requirements 4. Obligation. Would the intended use case require custom development to support or maintain? What is the duration of the requested exception? Please specify if the proposal can be fulfilled using the features of the existing APIs and datasets. If necessary features or datasets are not already available, please clarify with reference to the published documentation. Notes Providing exceptional access is effectively a form of in-kind support. The value includes any initial and ongoing development support, and infrastructure expense (in particular, data transfer costs). Contributions back to the Wikimedia movement (e.g., through content donations and data reports, tools, infrastructure, volunteer support and activities, and technical collaborations) could be understood as reciprocal in-kind contributions. In accordance with the Wikimedia Enterprise operating principles regarding non-exclusivity, any newly developed software feature or dataset must be made available to all. This might raise the financial cost of operating the service considerably, or decrease the strategic value of the proposed use case. 5. Mission alignment. Is the intended use case aligned with any of the needs identified in the Movement Strategy Recommendations? Please explain how the intended use will help the Wikimedia movement reach at least one of these goals. Notes There is no perfect definition of “mission alignment”. Nevertheless, the Movement Strategy recommendations (2020) represent the culmination of wide-ranging consultation across the Wikimedia community and stakeholders about our future. Its recommendations are broad in scope, stable, and independent of any one stakeholder’s needs. Special consideration would be given to organizations serving marginalized communities, underrepresented languages, or Wikimedia sister projects. The proposed use-case should not deliberately create or reinforce closed knowledge silos, proprietary forks of the content, or circumvent community norms or policies. 6. Values alignment. Do the requester’s professional practices or business model align with Wikimedia’s values? Please explain how the request (individual or organization) is in support of these values. Notes A human rights assessment is undertaken by the WMF for certain users of paid accounts for the Enterprise APIs (regardless of payment or exceptional access), in accordance with the Human Rights Policy and Commercial Sales and Contracts Policy. However, in order to receive free access to a paid account, the user should also be able to demonstrate a commitment to open knowledge, transparency, and/or public-benefit mission (such as education, cultural heritage, intergovernmental agency). If requesting from a commercial organisation, specify if the lack of exceptional access would significantly jeopardize a public-benefit mission – essential for research, accessibility, public information or safety, for example. The business-model should at the very least not be in conflict with Wikimedia’s values – for example by being built upon harmful misinformation, disinformation, human rights violations, extractive data use, unethical generative AI, or undisclosed paid-editing practices on Wikimedia sites. If you have any questions, please leave a message on the Talkpage or email <techpartnershipswikimedia.org>